Mathing, Mouthing, and Other Miseries

She was at the bar, leaning in like she was about to reveal the secret of life to the bartender when all she wanted was to announce that we’d ditched our bar seats for a table in the restaurant—a stunt people pull when they haven’t seen each other in, oh, thirty minutes and want to relive the reunion.

I tried to warn her. “They’ll make us pay the tab up here,” I said. “And not without a Greek chorus of grumbles. Just keep it simple.”

The bartender, engaged in a ritualistic polishing of a single glass—around and around it went, his beady eyes fixed on me as if I owed him money. Which, of course, I did.

“I was mathing the tip,” I explained to her, fumbling with my wallet.

“Mathing?” she asked, as though I’d told her I was reinventing fire.

“Yes, mathing. Ten percent times two. I’m very advanced.”

“You mean mouthing?” she said, with a smirk sharp enough to cut citrus.

“No,” I countered. “Fight, flight, or freeze—I’m a freezer. My ancestors probably stood still while wolves, sabertooths, or very motivated sloths picked them off one by one.”

She snorted, which she called laughing. “It takes a village, I guess. Somebody had to be the meat supply.”

“Thank you for that anthropological insight,” I muttered. “Anyway, mathing—it’s a thing we say at work. You know, like, ‘The math’s not mathing.’ Or, ‘My brain’s not braining.’”

“You’ve changed,” she said, which is her go-to line whenever I use a word with more than two syllables.

“I don’t think I tipped,” I admitted just a little too quickly.

“You haven’t changed,” she replied, grabbing me by the armpits like I was a misbehaving puppy. It is another one of her charming quirks—treating me like a Labrador needing retraining. I should find it more annoying, but I don’t.

“What are we going to do with you?” she said, tilting her head like I was a broken vase she couldn’t bear to throw out.

“With me? I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. I haven’t seen you in half an hour, and already you’ve found the one bartender who despises you. You’re still a masochist.”
“I’m not—”

“You are,” she interrupted, letting go of my armpits only to kiss me on my forehead. “You punish yourself. It’s like a hobby. And I bet you’re going to tell me it’s because you grew up in that cult.”

“It wasn’t a cult. It was… organized.”

“Sure it was. Anyway, what are we going to do?” the woman asked like I was a shared project forgotten about until today.

“Continue drinking?”

“And where do you propose we do that? This place is too fast-paced for me. I need to slow down.”

“You’re not allowed to pace yourself?”

“Incapable,” she said, swirling her glass. “And that bartender knows it. He’s trying to get me drunk. It’s a scam to squeeze tips out of me, but I’m not drinking what he’s squeezing. You get me?”

“They,” I corrected because I enjoy living dangerously.